Spoooooooooky!

Well good tiding ladies and germs, Halloween is almost upon us once again.  Seemly sneaking out from the dark shadowy corner of a abandon mental institute basement.  Scraping ominously forward on the cold concrete, throaty ragged breath and menacing red glowing eyes dragging closer, and closer.  There is no escape, your back up against the wall, clammy and slick with some unknown, gummy liquid.  Possibly blood, but it’s to dark to tell.  It’s on your hands, the back of your jacket, in your hair.  The remnants of it’s last victim no doubt.  You glance toward the stairs, at the top of the landing is a single flickering bulb, hanging from a frayed wire.  It’s should be casting it’s light down the flight of stairs toward you, but it seems to shy away, almost as if it knows whatever is down here should not and can not be illuminated.  You are panicking now. Your breath is coming in ragged gasps, there’s not enough air down here, you can’t seem to think clearly.  There’s a small voice in back of your mind, a voice of reason saying, this isn’t happening, this isn’t real, but it’s muffled and far away.  It’s very close now, darkness, black shadowy nightmare.  A sudden high pitched shriek echo's through the building and its on you. There is no struggle, there is no fight, just a fresh coat of red on the wall behind you.

Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week, be sure to tip your waitress, and try the veal.

I really enjoy Halloween.  I’m not one of these people who spend half the year cooking up an insane costume or anything like that, my enjoyment is a little more…subdued.  I mean, I don’t like parties, I don’t like dressing up, I don’t like kids, what else is there?  I like Halloween because it bring into the spotlight something that I find very fascinating, the perception of the paranormal.  Ghosts, demons, witchcraft, voodoo, ESP, precognition, telepathic powers, magic, and of course zombies!

I use the term perception of the paranormal because that’s what it is, perceptions, all this stuff is completely harmless, because it only exists in our minds eye, but that doesn’t make it any less fun.
Obviously there are countless accounts of people all over the world who swear by their experiences into the unknown. I wholeheartedly agree that these people wholeheartedly believe what they have experienced is real.  There is one very important thing to consider whenever you believe you have experienced something supernatural, and this is the whole concept of this post.

Your brain is a complete and utter ASSHOLE!

It is the one foe that knows your every weakness, it knows how to push your buttons.  It knows how to get under your skin, because it quite literally is.  It’s the foe that you cannot outsmart, cannot reason with, it will defeat you at every turn.  It doesn’t matter how clever you are, how reasonable you are, or how savvy you are, it’s better.

I browsed a conversation on reddit the other day, it was a discussion of people posting the freakiest thing that ever happened to them.  I would say that a good 60-70% of the stories posted were of the “something evil in my bedroom” kind of thing.  Every one of them had the same aspects to them.

-A dark figure, either hovering over them, standing at the foot of the bed, sitting on their chest, or coming in through a door/window.
-Hard to breath, pressure on the chest or back
-sense of looming evil, hatred, or malice
-hearing breathing or voices
-inability to move or talk

Now this all sounds very terrifying, and if it happens to you, it in fact does feel very real.  I should know, it’s happened to me. To discover what is really going on here all you really have to do is Google “sleep paralysis.”  Every single one of these points correspond exactly with a symptom of it.  Essentially what is happening is, you are stuck somewhere between REM sleep and fully conscious.  This can last for several seconds to several hours in rare cases.  You can’t move because your body is paralysed during REM sleep so you can’t act out your dreams, combine that with extremely vivid hallucinations and your mind reflexively goes into self preservation mode.  When you are in that mode, your mind automatically errs on the side of caution, thus assigning your hallucinations as hostile.

It’s funny though, even when people are confronted with this overwhelmingly simple scientific explanation they somehow believe that their experience was different, that they are the exception because is was simply “too real” to have been a hallucination.  There are also the “one offs,” variations on the theme.  Some people claim that they could in fact move, and tried to escape, or that they have physical marks on them, or that someone sharing the room with them also saw it, but couldn’t seem to remember it in the morning.  What you have to remember is, your brain is a complete and utter ASSHOLE.  If it tells you it’s real, then you have no choice but to believe it.  After all, your hallucinations ARE real, then were made by your brain, which is the very same brain that insists that they are real.  You can even hallucinate that you moved, acted in some way, or maybe you even did, but just because you moved, doesn’t mean the hallucinations have to go away immediately.

Precognition was another big theme in the discussion.  People claiming to have seen or felt or experienced something happening in advance.  The most obvious explanation for this is pure and simple coincidence.  Something very similar you saw in the past corresponds with something you see in the present, and your brain makes a connection where there is none.  The second explanation although benign in nature, I find equally as terrifying as a paranormal experience.

Your memories are not what you think they are.  Often times something you remember as cold hard facts, the history of your life, is partially a fabrication.  Your memories are not set in stone, saved on a hard drive and posted to Youtube. They are in constant flux, changing ever so subtlety as time goes by.  Something you see in the present can get copy and pasted to a memory in your past.  Kind of make you wonder how fine the line really is between sane and insane.

There are a few other common threads in supposed paranormal experiences, one very popular one is suggestive psychology.  Essentially if you tell someone a house is haunted before they go it in, thier mind will fill in the blanks.  They will be more likely to experience something than someone who has not been told the house was haunted.  It’s like a placebo effect.  Simple explanation as to why that is?  Your brain is a complete and utter ASSHOLE. 

The final common theme I wanted to cover was the ol’ “something in the woods” type experiences.  Now when it’s cold and dark, and the forest is looming up ominously around you, once again, your primal instincts kick in.  Every sound, every rustle, every snapped twig is automatically assigned as a threat.  That fear is designed to keep you alive, although I doubt that fluffy little bunny that just hopped out from the underbrush is going to hurt you, you big sissy.

So, this Halloween, have fun, scare yourself!  Go hang out in graveyard at night.  Watch scary movies, tell ghost stories, visit a haunted house, walk under a ladder, break a mirror, summon Bloody Mary in the bathroom, it’s all silly, but can be fun too, even if just for an adrenaline rush.
Oh, and seriously it’s just a bunny, a fluffy one, with a poofy tail.  Ya’ big baby.

-jer

Kidney Disease, Nothing Funny about that

There are all kinds of horrible diseases in this world.  Large, far reaching diseases like cancer and AIDS.  These are so prevalent in todays society that it would be difficult to find someone who has NOT in some way been affected by it.  It is estimated by the World Heath Organization that 7.6 million+ people die worldwide ever year from cancer.  There are over 200 different types of cancer that the human body can be afflicted with, and there are only three different treatments.  Naturally because of the scope and scale of this disease, it gets lots of exposer.  Cancer research, treatment trials, fund raisers, Facebook slacktivism, celebrity spokespeople, etc.  It’s ubiquitous as far as diseases go.  You ask anyone to quickly name a disease, cancer will probably be their answer.  It deservers the attention it gets.

As deadly as it is, there is one disease that can overshadow even cancer’s far reaching grasp, and that would be the disease that YOU have.

Everyone no doubt has heard of Kidney disease, after all it’s mortality rate is quiet respectable at around 1.2 million deaths per year, worldwide.  The term “Kidney disease” is kind of a catch all for many distinct different afflictions that  just happen to target the kidneys.  Some can be immediately fatal, like acute kidney failure, some are simply extremely painful but otherwise harmless, like kidney stones.  The most common kind however, is chronic kidney disease.  It’s a slow, steady, inevitable march towards renal failure.  It’s insidiousness lies in the fact that someone can have a disease their whole life and not know it until it’s too late.  No symptoms, no side effects.

This is what I have, and as selfish as it may sound, to me, it is the most important disease.  To be more specific, I have polycystic kidney disorder, or PKD for short.  There are two versions of this disease, but by far the most common type is the autosomal dominant version.  It’s transmitted genetically from parent to child at an alarming rate of a 50% chance.  PKD is widely noted as being the most life-threatening genetically past on disorder.  Basically what happens is your kidneys start to grow cysts, usually this starts at a fairly young age.  Then, as you age you start to get cysts on your cysts.  Your kidneys start  to balloon out as you age, getting up to four or five times their original size.  From here there is a whole shopping list of symptoms that cab occur.  Oddly though, patients my experience some none or even all of them.  Nobody really knows why the extreme divergence.

These include mild to sever back and side pain, as well as headaches.  Urinary tract infections, hematuria, liver and pancreas cysts, abnormal heart valves, high blood pressure, kidney stones, aneurysms, exhaustion and diverticulosis.  Or course, in addition your kidneys can slowly start the grim march toward failure.  I say “can” because in some lucky people, the kidneys never do fail.  They can live a relatively normal healthy life.  Once again, nobody seems to have an answer as to why that is.  Noticing a trend?  Nobody seems to know much of anything about this disease, I’ve even got to doctors and had to explain to them what it was.
One side effect that you won’t read in any medical text or website is this.  If you have this disease, then it is very likely that several if not all of your family members do too.  This not only means you will not be getting a transplant from them, but you could potentially have to watch all of your loved ones slowly degrading into renal failure.  My Grandmother ultimately died from it when I was very young.  My mother has it, my sister has it, my brother has it, as well as a whole cavalcade of cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. 

Every day I thank the anonymous person who sign up to donate their organs when they past.  That person gave my mother a kidney.  Such a simply thing, and yet if you were to do it, you will have a profound impact on someone’s life, even if you never know it.

Why am I writing this?  I feel like this is an intensely personal thing, more suited to private journal than a public blog.  I think maybe because I feel the need to shine some light on the disease, even though nobody reads this damn thing.  Possibly it’s because I am scared, terrified in fact.  I am one of the unlucky ones, I have been blesses with almost every nasty symptom that my kidneys can throw at me.  I’m scared, but I need to face up to it, I have no choice in the matter.  This is one way for me to face up to that fear.  Call it out publicly and say, “fuck you PKD!”  I think it’s a general rule that if your are crying as you are typing, your probably shouldn’t publish it, but you know, fuck it. 

-jer 

Windows 8 my Indie gaming!

So I was surfing the ol’ internets, as I often do, and I came across this little gem of a headline on Kotaku.com.

Notch: “I’d rather have minecraft not run on win 8 at all than to play along.”

This isn’t the first time the self appointed elder-god of indie gaming has voiced his complete and utter distain for Windows 8.  He’s not the only one either, Gabe Newell of Valve has also expressed his distaste for the OS.  The crux of their collective argument is that it will turn the windows platform into a “Walled garden” type environment not unlike the Apple ecosystem.  Somehow this will stymie innovation, the windows app store will take control and it will all be over.  Dogs and cats living together!  Mass hysteria!

Now, I know both of these fellas are pretty big names in the gaming world, and I personally respect Mr. Newell a great deal.  I have to wonder though, what the fuck are they blathering about?  Notch feels that the app store will hamper indie developers and discourage them from developing software.  Well, have you looked at the windows phone app store recently?  The store that soon will be one and the same as the Windows 8 store?  A huge percentage of the apps there are made by fucking indie developers!  Gabe feels that a lot of top tier OEM companies will exit the PC market, and leave Win 8 for dead on the side of the road.  Clearly not the case; as I covered in a previous post, everyone and their grandma is making a Win 8 device this season.

You have to realize that Windows 8 is still fucking Windows!  It’s an optimized version of Win 7 with a touch based interface glued on top of it.  Nobody is worried about Win 7 somehow locking out developers and software that doesn’t have the Microsoft seal of approval stamped on it, so why do so many people have their panties in a bunch about Win 8?  It’s basically the same thing.

I have a few suggestions for Gabe.

1)Make a cool little Windows 8 style live tile for steam that shows all the current sales.  Now people can shop on steam when they aren't even on steam.

2)Do exactly what you are doing now, offering a incredible PC gaming distribution experience.

3)Stop being a whiny little bitch.

And some for Notch.

1) Go make games!  You know, that thing that made you rich and famous?

2)Stop being a whiny little bitch.

-jer

Apple Vs. The World (iphone 5 edition)

I have a bit of a reputation of bashing Apple, but I feel I’m a bit misunderstood.  You see, I don’t hate Apple products.  Apple make very nice devices, I feel they are way overprice for what you get, but that doesn’t bother me, I don’t buy them.  What I don’t like is people who go insane over these devices.  Not everybody is a rabid fanatic, you will find plenty of people with a lot of technical know-how that use Apple products simply because it works for them, and to that I say, “good on you!  Keep doing what you’re doing.”

As of late there has been a lot of flak directed at apple for their new iphone 5.  Some even from myself.  Do they deserve it?  Well, yes and no.  Let me explain.  On one hand, it is a very nice device, and a completely logical upgrade to the 4s.  I’m sure it is designed and built with the same signature care and quality that Apple is known for.  So in that respect, no they don’t deserve the criticisms they are garnering.

This is where it gets interesting, at least to me.  Traditionally new technologies have always been market by way of what it does.  I mean, that would be anyone’s first question when a new whirly-gig-o-rama comes out.  What does it do?  Along comes Apple and flips the script.  They are not marketing on what it does, but what it means.  What does it MEAN to have an Apple product?  It means status, it means style, it means sophistication, it means taste.  Having a shiny new iMac on your desk is just plain sexier than a plain beige or black box under the desk.   They use words like “magical” in their adds.   This strategy has help them sell products like gangbusters!  Two million iphone 5 orders in 24 hours, that’s insane. 

What burns bright never burns long though.  There is only so many times they can say “revolutionary” before it starts to become meaningless.  Apple is painting themselves into a corner, and thus they have started to get tepid responses from the people in the tech world.  The early adopters.  This is also where the poking fun at them comes in.  The iphone 5 is good, possibly even great, but its not forged by Odin himself, and tempered with unicorn tears.  So, in this regard yes, they absolutely deserve it. You reap what you sow.

So, how does this affect people?  Well like I said, for a lot of people, not at all.  They just use the damn things for what they need them for.  However, there is a segment of the Apple buying population that have fostered a manic rabid devotion to the company.  This is a direct result of the way Apple has done their marketing.  I honestly think their marketing teams have been watching evangelical churches, and taking careful notes. In many ways Apple is no different from any other large corporation, they make, market, and sell products, just like everyone else.  Yet they still stick out like a sore thumb, with countless wars waged on either side, all over the internet. I’ve never seen anything like it.  All because some marketing genius on the part of Apple, technology as a status symbol.

Or maybe it’s just fate that Apple is destined to create controversy.  Even in a post like this, where I’m simply trying to suss out why there is such a constant hoopla over this nonsense, people will probably fight and argue about whether I’m right, or completely off base.  Hell, simply by writing this post I’m inadvertently jumping in to the fray.

So:

Would you cry and throw a fit if you couldn’t get a new iphone?  Would you trample and stampede your way into a store to get one, stepping on orphans and old ladies? Would you buy a new iphone simply because everyone else is?

Well then, I don’t like you, and I will continue to bash you and your ilk.

Are you going to buy a new iphone because you need a new phone?  Or your contract is up?  Or you’ve done some research on all the phones out and decided that it’s the best one for you?

Well then, I like you.  Gimmie a hug!

Peace everybody.

-jer

Guild Wars 2: First Impressions

So I just picked up Guild Wars 2 the other day, and I thought I’d share my thoughts on my experiences so far.  I’m doing this partly because I’m really digging this game, partly because I need to generate some content, and partly because I’m secretly hoping that someone from a big website happens across my blog and wants to hire me to scream barely coherent profanity at the internet.  Let’s get this abomination of a blog entry started shall we?

First up, I would have really preferred to buy this game, like I do all my games, via digital download.  I went to the site to buy it and lo and behold, they are sold out…of digital downloads.  Evidently they had temporarily stop generating CD keys as their servers were getting slammed with people trying to buy the game.   My only hope was to find a physical copy, which due to my keen insight, I managed to pick up at the first place I stopped.  Who would think to go to a drug store to buy a PC game? Me I guess.  I can’t even recall the last time I used this archaic method to buy a game, in fact, it’s been so long that my DVD-rom has been broken for well over a year, and I haven’t bothered to replace it, I never have any use for it.  So, after installing my new DVD-rom, I set about installing the game and I’m proud to report that installing and setting up an account went off without a hitch.

So now you might be wondering WTF is a Guild Wars 2?  Whelp, it’s a brand spanking new MMMMOORRPGGGggggggg……..that is Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing game.  There a few things that set this apart from others like WoW and what have you.  This biggest one is that it is completely free to play.  No micro-payments or subscription fees.  EFF AR E E, free.

After running the game for the first time, there was a 2 gig patch to download, which is not unusual for this kind of game.  Thankfully it went extremely fast.  Once that was done, you log on and you have to choose a server.  One thing I was disappointed to find out was that once you choose a server, you are stuck on it. You can’t make characters on a new server unless you pay a fee of some kind.  What the hell is the point of that?  After that, you get to make a character.  You have a choice between five different races, and eight classes.  Now, for some reason I’ve always enjoyed making a seemingly conflicted character, a “good” race with an “evil” class or vice versa.  So I decided to go with some sort of leafy plant person, who was a necromancer, and that’s when things started to go south on me.

As someone who is a veteran of countless MMORPG’s over the years, I think I have a pretty good handle on what to expect, but for some reason my first experience with this one was an extremely jarring one.  First off, the starting zone for the leafy people felt extremely alien and hard to navigate.  Secondly, my necromancer played and felt nothing like any necromancer in any other game I’ve played.  Instead of a spell caster with a mastery of the power over death, casting debilitating spells from afar while their minion attacks, I found myself smack in the middle of the melee.  Yes, necros in this game are pretty much high damage melee with light armour.  Squishy yet deadly.   The combat, although quite different from traditional MMO’s, is actually quite similar to The Secret World.  There is a heavy emphasis on fast paced, action oriented combat.  Just not quite so punishing as unforgiving as TSW.

I decided to take a step back and start from scratch after that initial foray.  I went back to the drawing board and made a human guardian class.  Basically a dude in armour with an emphasis on defensive combat.  Now partly because I knew what to expect, and having a more traditional class and starting area, I could really focus on enjoying the game.  The first thing that really struck me is that this game is truly drop dead gorgeous, and the developers know it.  You get experience points for just about everything in this game: completing quest, killing monsters, helping NPC’s, collecting trade materials, crafting items, tying your shoes correctly, tying your shoes incorrectly, and even from just wandering around and seeing the sights.  I went from level six to level seven simply by wandering around the starting city looking at all the beautiful scenery.

There’s really only one quest, and it spans the whole game.  It’s the story of your character, which is based off some questions the game asks you when you initially make him.  This story will change over time depending on the decisions you make as you play the game, so no two people playing the game will have the same story.  For example, in my story, I had to deicide whether to save countless people from being poisoned, or save my best friend from being carved up by a ruthless gang leader.  Depending on what you decide, the story changes.

As for the rest of the game, there is no quest log, or npc’s asking you to kill 35 sewer rats, or collect 18 lumps of moose poo.  Everything in the game just kind of happens as you wander around.  You’ll come across a caravan making it’s way from one town to another, and you can travel with it, protecting it from various perils.  When you get to your destination, you will get XP, money, and karma.  You may even discover that the village you just showed up at is under attack by rabid weasels or what have you.  Now you are in another event, protect the town.  That’s how the game plays out, it flows along very organically and really feels like you are just an adventurer wandering the world and….well adventuring.

So far, my noble hero guy is only level 11 out of a possible 85 levels, so I haven’t really seen enough to comment on grouping, character advancement, pvp, or high level content, but what I have seen so far has impressed me greatly.  I may make a second impression post at some point, maybe I won’t, I don’t know, where am I?  Who are you people?!  Get off my lawn!

Now if you will excuse me, I have some rabid, zombie, robot, giant, killer weasels to hunt down and defeat with my +4 dagger of nerdiness.  HUZZAH!


-jer    

Nokia Lumia? More like Poo-mia! Amirite?

So today was the big day for Nokia and Microsoft.  They’ve been gearing up for today for months now, preparing for the big product announcement in New York City.

I have to preface this post right off the bat to say I’m actually a big fan of the Nokia Windows phone, in fact my phone is a Lumia 900.  Also, like Bruce Wayne believes in Harvey Dent, I believe in Windows 8.  It’s not the OS we deserve, but the OS we need right now.  So the inevitable stream of negative to downright hostile diatribe to follow must be construed as, oh let’s call it “constructive criticism.”

Ok, let’s get down to business.  I’m not what you would call an “expert” on things like press events, or announcing new products, but I’m pretty sure that if you massively hype up an event 6 months in advance, you had damn well better bring your ‘A’ game.  You had better blow our collective asses out of the water.  What we got from Nokia and Microsoft wasn’t even their ‘B’ game, it’s was hovering somewhere around their ‘F’ game.  That would be ‘F’ as in such popular words as “Fail.”

There wasn’t a single thing at their press release today that was even mildly surprising, pretty much everything new they had to show was already common knowledge, leaked on the internet days and weeks before.  Some of the “revolutionary” new features like city lens, I’ve had on my Luima 900 for almost two weeks already.  All in all, it seemed a lot more like Nokia was announcing a new camera than a new phone.  I swear they couldn’t stop gushing about the fucking camera on this thing.  A camera with such unheard of things as “image stabilization”, and some newfangled thing called a “BSI” sensor.  They did show off some somewhat gimmicky but sort of neat after affect type apps, like animating parts of the frame, or erasing unwanted components of the image, but those deserve a footnote at best, not front and center attention.

Despite all the blathering on, they manage to say remarkably little of any real use or relevance to the people who are actually going to buy this stuff.  How much do they cost?  When are they available?  How long will it go on a charge?  Which carriers will be picking them up?   In my opinion these are the real meat and potatoes of any product announcement.  Don’t bore me with any other bullshit unless it’s really gonna blow my ass away.  In this regard, they should take a page from apple’s playbook, they know how to announce a new product.  Then again, they might sue your ass if you do that.

Let’s get to the actual presentation itself.  Stephan Elop did a decent job of Bookending the whole presentation.  I mean as the CEO of Nokia, you would expect him to get up there and say a few flattering words about his company.  He performed as expected, with adequate speaking skills, if a little wooden.  For the other three presenters, two from Nokia and one from Microsoft, it was nothing short of a train wreck.  A stuttering, mumbling, awkward, sweaty under armed train wreck with all the personality of a potato.  When the presenters weren't dazzling you with their lack of public speaking skills, you can marvel at the technicians scurrying around the stage, trying in vain to get failed demo’s to work properly.  Breathtaking.  Just when you thought you couldn’t take anymore of this whirlwind extravaganza of showmanship, Steve Ballmer himself popped by to talk about….oh Christ, I have no idea, I think I was in a coma at this point.

As a consumer, and owner of a Lumia 900,  this is what I have taken away from the presentation:
The 920 has wireless charging, NFC, a slightly better camera, and a higher res screen.  Other than that, it’s the same as the phone I already have.  Sure, you can make an argument about the new dual core processor, the increased RAM and storage space, and the new OS. but here’s what I have to say to that.
“What does it DO for me?  Really, what does a dual core processor MEAN to me in daily use?” 
The answer of course, is nothing.  We have reached a point where specs don’t really mean much anymore, it’s about the experience.  What can I experience on the new 920 that I can’t on my 900?  In my oh so humble opinion, very little.

The whole reason why I’m tearing into these guys right now is because Microsoft really needed this to be great.  They really needed to add some validity to their new OS.  There is so much rhetoric floating around about it being to little to late, not able to compete with IOS and Android.  This was a great chance to show the world what they are made of.  Well shit guys, get it together!

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little tired of all this bullshit. Call me when you have a price.  Call me when I can go buy one.  Call me when you actually have something new and interesting to say.  But most importantly, call me from your new Windows phone.

-jer

The Death of the Noble Mouse

I know it might be a bold statement, but I’m gonna go on record today.  I believe the days of the ubiquitous input device that you likely have in your hand as we speak has it’s days numbered.  It has served us well over the years, and has yet to let us down.  It has soldiered on throughout the years as an unsung hero of the computing age.  Never complaining, even though lord knows what horrible shit you have clicked on; oh the secrets it must have!

Now the mouse is not going to go away completely, let’s just call it “semi-retirement,” it will always have a place, but it’s going to be more relegated to a niche corner of the world, things that require a little more precise moments that you can get touching your screen.  Gaming, graphics and design, auto-cad etc.
I know what you must be thinking right now, I’m thinking the same thing myself, “how many live chickens can I cram into my car?”  You might also be thinking, “Jer, you are a certified mad-man. On what basis can you make this bold and daring assumption about the current and future state of the wonderful world of high tech….ummm tech.”

Well, let me tell you champ.

You see, there is this little shindig they have in Berlin, (that’s Germany) every year around this time called the IFA.  What is the IFA you may ask.  Well, good question young sir or madam.  The IFA is a huge consumer electronics show where various companies come to show off there shit.  Why is this important?  That’s a very noble inquiry old chap.  The IFA is in the late summer/early fall, which means that all the cool ass shit you see there is going to be hitting store shelves just before Christmas.  I hear people love to by shit at that time of year.

Let’s have a quick look at the highlights!  Jeeves, roll the film!

Acer:
The M3, V5 and S7 ultra books, all have been upgraded this year to touch screens.  They also are releasing two new Windows tablets.

Dell:
They showed of a fucking 27 inch touch screen “tablet.”  They call it a tablet, but’s really just a touch screen all in one desktop.

HP:
Touch screen laptops, tablets, and hybrids, not a mouse to be seen.

Oh this is taking to long!  Ok, Samsung, Lenovo, Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba all are sporting touch screen laptops, ultra books, tablets, and desktops.  The more astute readers my have notice a pattern developing here, and you are correct, all these manufactures make electronics!  Also, they’re all touch screen.  In fact, the only computer manufacturer that I could find that didn’t have a touch screen computer is Apple.
I was planning on doing a whole bunch of thorough research and providing links to all these new products, but that seemed way too much like work, so I found a website that had already done all the heavy lifting.

You’re welcome.  

For better or for worse, Windows 8 has almost arrived.  Next month, there is going to be a paradigm shift, I really believe that the very fundamentals of computers is changing.  Anyone who tries to cling to the old ways is going to get left behind.
So, I think the only real thing left to say is goodnight sweet prince, your memory will live on in our hearts and mind forever-ish.

RIP 1965-2013

-Jer